Chapter 27 LUCA
LUCA
Thick gray smoke hangs under the crystal chandelier in the Palermo boardroom. Ten men sit around twenty feet of dark polished wood, sweating through thousand-dollar suits while they pretend their hands aren't shaking against their water glasses.
Out in the corridor, Matteo steps into my path and grabs both of my lapels, yanking the dark wool straight. He smooths down the collar like a neat jacket can hide two weeks of blood, gunfights, and Sofia getting dragged off a street.
Matteo matches my stride with an easy swagger. "You look like you're about to kill someone."
"I might kill several someones." I keep moving toward the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall without breaking pace.
"Can I be in charge of severance packages? I want to hand out tiny fruit baskets with passive-aggressive notes." Matteo lifts a small paper bag, rattling the contents proudly like we are settling in for a movie premiere instead of a boardroom reckoning.
"Put the fucking snacks away, Matteo." I reach out and shove his arm down.
"They're almonds. Very quiet. Very useful during political tension." He cradles the bag against his chest like an injured bird.
"Eat one in that room and I will feed you the rest of the bag whole." I push through the heavy oak double doors, stepping directly into the sudden hush.
Eight men sit around the long table. Some I trust. Some I've never trusted, not once, not for a single conversation. Don Salvatore Barone sits near the head, close to where my father used to sit, acting like the empty space beside him belongs to his own bloated ego.
"Luca. Good of you to remember we exist." Barone rubs his jowls, squinting through a haze of cigar smoke.
"I remember everyone who owes me something, Salvatore. You're at the top of a very long list." I pull out the high-backed chair at the head of the table and take my seat without blinking.
"Always so generous with your bookkeeping," Barone grumbles, flicking ash onto a crystal dish.
A ripple of laughter goes around the table, thin and nervous.
"We're not here to talk about fucking debts," Barone growls, leaning forward until the wood groans under his elbows. "We're here to talk about a war you seem determined to drag the rest of us into."
"I didn't start this war." I drop my tone until it cuts straight through the low hum in the room.
"Could have fooled me with all the bodies dropping," Barone shoots back, turning his mouth down into an ugly grimace.
Barone leans forward to spit his words. "Your grandfather did, thirty years ago, and Bellini finished the job on your parents twenty years later. And now you want us bleeding for a grudge that isn't ours."
I keep my palms flat on the wood, because the alternative is breaking his nose against the mahogany. "It stopped being a grudge the moment they grabbed Sofia off the street. And it ended the minute Nonna put a bullet through Vincenzo Bellini's hand to bring her back."
Don Fabbri, younger, sharper, and the only man in this room with any sense, leans forward on his elbows.
"Sofia is back home safe at the villa. Nora Blake helped pull that off, and we all know it.
Vincenzo is nursing a shattered hand. That is great news for your bloodline, Luca.
But good news for you does not mean peace for the rest of us. "
"Meaning what, exactly?" I demand, narrowing my eyes at him.
"Meaning three families at this table have had approaches made to them. Quiet ones. Bellini people, talking about neutrality agreements, talking about protection, talking about how much smoother business would run if certain other families weren't around to complicate things."
Cigar smoke drifts straight up, unbroken by a single breath. Barone's heavy jaw freezes mid-chew, the tobacco trapped behind his teeth.
"Which three families," I ask.
Fabbri glances sideways, and that's answer enough. Nobody volunteers. The men keep their hands folded against the mahogany, refusing to make eye contact with me or anyone else.
I tap my index finger on the mahogany tabletop. "This is the part where somebody's honest. Or this is the part where I start assuming everyone in this room is compromised, and I plan accordingly."
"That's a threat," Barone barks, his face flushing red.
"It's an itemized list." I tilt my head, measuring his reaction. "There is a distinct difference, and you're smart enough to know it."
"Don't lecture me on vocabulary, boy," Barone spits, gripping his cigar tighter.
Fabbri exhales through his nose, twirling a gold pen between his knuckles. "You always did talk like your father. Cold as hell and twice as polite about it."
"I'll take that as a compliment." I offer him a cold, razor-thin smile.
"Wasn't necessarily meant as one," Fabbri murmurs, tapping a gold pen against his knuckles.
A man near the far end, Don Costa, clears his throat, breaking the stare-down. He leans forward slowly.
"There's a leak," Costa announces, meeting my stare without blinking. "In the network. Someone has been feeding Bellini our shipment routes for months. That is not a rumor anymore. We traced two intercepted trucks back to information only a handful of people had."
I look around the table slowly, letting the silence stretch until it's uncomfortable enough that somebody has to fill it.
"How many people had that information?" I lean forward, locking onto Costa.
"Six," Costa reveals, his jaw setting grimly. "Including two men in this room."
"Then we have a mathematical problem," I murmur, scanning the perimeter of the table.
"Names," I demand, slamming a fist onto the table hard enough to rattle the water glasses.
"That's the problem," Costa explains, holding up a single finger. "We don't have names. We have a pattern. And patterns without names make everyone at this table suspicious of everyone else, which is exactly what Bellini wants."
Matteo, who is supposed to be standing quietly by the door pretending to be furniture, mutters just loud enough for me to hear, "This is worse than the almonds situation."
I ignore him. Barone doesn't.
Barone jabs a thick finger toward Matteo like he's noticing him for the first time. "Who the fuck is this?"
"My cousin," I say. "He's allowed to be here."
"He's allowed to keep his fucking mouth shut," Barone growls, "which he apparently isn't."
Matteo raises a hand in polite defense from the back wall. "To be fair, nobody told me almonds were a controversial choice. I can switch to cashews if it lowers the blood pressure in here."
A couple of the younger dons actually laugh at that, real laughs, the kind that crack the tension in the room by a fraction. Even Fabbri's mouth twitches. Barone looks like he's aged a year in the last four seconds.
Barone looks around the table for support. "Can we return to the part where three families are being courted by our fucking enemies and nobody here seems alarmed enough?"
"I'm alarmed." I hold his gaze until he looks away. "I'm just not screaming like a child about it, because screaming doesn't fix leaks. It just tells those pathetic bastard we noticed."
Costa nods slowly, looking relieved that someone has finally stopped shouting. "What do you propose, Luca?"
"A full audit. Every shipment route rebuilt from scratch, need-to-know basis only, no exceptions, including for people at this table who think their bloodline exempts them from suspicion."
Barone's jaw tightens. "You're suggesting I'm fucking compromised?"
"I'm suggesting everyone is compromised until proven otherwise. That includes me. That includes my own family. Nobody gets a pass because their last name is old."
Barone points his burning cigar tip in my direction. "Careful. That kind of talk makes allies nervous."
"Good. Nervous allies double-check their own house before they come knocking on mine." I lean back, crossing my legs and folding my hands over my knee.
"You act like you own every brick in Sicily," Barone grinds out through clenched teeth.
"Only the ones currently standing," I reply evenly.
Costa finally nods in grim agreement, resting his heavy elbows on the mahogany blotter. "Luca is right. An audit is the only clean way through this. Anything less and we are fighting a war on two fronts, one visible and one we cannot see."
Fabbri leans back, arms crossed. "And if the audit turns something up. Somebody in this room, somebody with a seat at this table. What then."
"Then that person answers for it the way anyone answers for betraying the Brotherhood." I trace a cold glance across every face. "No exceptions there either."
Nobody argues with that out loud. A few faces go carefully blank, which tells me more than an argument would.
Barone pushes his chair back, the legs scraping loud against the floor. "You're asking us to hand over our books to a man who kidnapped the wrong woman off a London street and then apparently kept her."
The room's attention swings to me like a searchlight. Matteo makes a small strangled sound near the door that might be a laugh he's trying to swallow.
"That situation," I reply, keeping my expression entirely flat, "has nothing to do with the audit."
"Doesn't inspire confidence, is all I'm saying." Barone smirks, scanning the table to see if anyone agrees.
"You want confidence, Salvatore, stop letting your men take meetings with Bellini's runners in back alleys." I lean in close, lowering my volume. "Or explain to me why your captain was seen sharing espresso with Lorenzo Bellini on Monday."
That lands. Barone's face goes a shade darker, and for a second I think he's going to stand up and make this physical, which would be a mistake he'd regret for the rest of his significantly shortened life.
Instead he sits back down, slow, deliberate, like he's reminding himself of the weight in the room.
Costa clears his throat. "The audit. I'll agree to it for my routes. Full access."
Fabbri nods a second later. "Mine too. We're not the ones who need to hide anything."
All eyes swing back to Barone. He looks around the table, sees the everyone isn't in his favor, and finally exhales through his teeth.
"Fine. Full audit. But if this turns out to be a witch hunt aimed at old families instead of finding your actual leak, I'll remember it."
"Noted." I stand up, buttoning my suit jacket with deliberate care. "Try not to be the leak, Salvatore, and it won't be an issue."
He doesn't dignify that with a response.
The meeting winds down after that, men filing out in twos and threes, murmuring to each other in the hallway in tones too low for me to catch. Barone leaves without looking back, slamming the heavy door hard enough to rattle the frame.
Matteo falls into step beside me as we leave, almonds still in hand, mercifully uneaten.
Matteo nudges my shoulder with his elbow as we hit the empty marble corridor. "So. That went great. Really brought the family together."
"It went exactly as well as I expected."
"Barone is going to be a problem."
"Barone is always a problem. It's practically his entire brand." I check my phone, scanning through security alerts.
Matteo pops an almond into his mouth, crunching softly. "Do you think he actually took a meeting with Bellini?"
"I know he did. He just doesn't know my men were sitting three tables away."
Matteo swallows hard, tossing the empty bag into a brass urn. "Do you believe Costa? About the six people?"
"I think it's whoever those six people talked to afterward, which could be half the staff in this building." I quicken my pace toward the exit.
"Nora would have had that whole room confessing in twelve minutes," Matteo muses with a dry grin. "And she would have billed Barone for the therapy session."
"Don't encourage her," I warn, though the thought alone pulls at the tension behind my ribs.
"Comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be."
We step out into the long corridor, heading straight toward the elevators.
I don't look back. There's a brutal war coming from outside these walls that I understand completely, and something colder starting to rot inside them, and I have no intention of letting either side tear down what belongs to me.